


Wings

by Fallowsthorn



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 23:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9629645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallowsthorn/pseuds/Fallowsthorn
Summary: Giovanni can't find Ezio, so he sends Claudia out to run a few errands for him. This ends very badly for Giovanni, and not all that much better for Claudia.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Much of the incidental dialogue (e.g., the lines of the courtesan, thief, and mercenary) is taken directly from the game or only changed slightly to fit the scenario. If something sounds familiar, that's probably why.

“Ezio! Ezio, where are you?” Claudia’s father, Giovanni, looked around, only to spot his daughter instead. “Claudia, have you seen your brother?”

Claudia shook her head wordlessly, and Giovanni made an exasperated noise. “Off getting into trouble with Federico, no doubt. I _told_ him to - Claudia, would you mind running an errand for me? I’ve no time to do it myself. It’s very important these letters are delivered as soon as possible, and there should be one waiting for you at the pigeon coop north of here. Thank you, mija." He kissed her on the forehead quickly, then resumed bustling around the house.

Clutching the papers, Claudia left, lost in her own thoughts. She knew she couldn't blame her father for not noticing her melancholy; it was obvious he hadn't been in a state to notice much. Still, the wound of Ducchio's betrayal was fresh, and though she was a woman of fourteen years already, a small childish part of her wanted to sob and hurt and whimper until someone came to make it all better.

Oh, and to not even find out from Ducchio himself! That was the real humiliation. That she had been so oblivious, so trusting, so _naive,_ that the other girls, whispering and giggling behind their hands, had had to spell out for her exactly what Ducchio was doing. Had she caught him in the act, she could have played the wronged woman, able to sever herself from the mess with her dignity, if not feelings, intact; had Ducchio confessed to her, repentant, she might have graciously allowed him a second chance - he was, after all, from a good family. But being the last one to know of his lack of integrity? The thought that she might have married him, and never known? Her cheeks burned with the mere memory of it.

Claudia took a moment to calm herself. The letters, at least, would give her something to do, and help take her mind off of things. She examined it, and learned that while she recognized neither the name of the courier or the courtyard, whoever had sketched the rough map included with the documents had labelled enough landmarks that she would be able to find her way.

After some stumbling around the city (and making a hasty detour to avoid the city guards, who were lazing around in the shade near a doorway and making lewd remarks amongst themselves about the women passing by), Claudia at last found her first destination, thanks in no part to the man and woman stationed at it, clearly expecting her.

“You Giovanni’s kid?”

Before Claudia could say anything, the woman smacked him on the arm. “No, _idiota,_ she just happens to look exactly like his daughter. You have a package for us?”

Claudia nodded and handed it over, a little warily.

The man noted her uneasy. “Don’t worry, girl, we’re not contagious!” And then, with a glance at the woman, “Least, I’m not.”

He earned another smack for his trouble, this one not as playful as the first. Claudia wasn’t sure if she should object, but the two of them turned and walked off, apparently just as amiably as they’d arrived, so she supposed it wasn’t any of her business.

Her next delivery was to a small alleyway off the side of some shops, but she couldn’t seem to spot anyone even vaguely matching the written description.

“Psst!” said someone above her.

Claudia whirled around and looked up. A man was standing on the flat roof of a building, the kind that were cut away to allow space to work that wasn’t in the street. She found the ladder and climbed it, not a little confused.

“I have a letter from-”

The somewhat suspicious-looking man cut her off. “-Giovanni Auditore? Good. Were you followed?” he asked urgently.

She blinked at him. “...No? Why would I be followed?”

“Give it here. Tell your father that they’re moving tonight. He should as well.”

Cryptic message delivered and cryptic package accepted, the man dropped easily down into the street and vanished in a passing crowd.

Claudia stared after him, trying in vain to put his words in some order that made sense. At last she shook her head and simply remembered the warning, if not the meaning behind it. She still had one more errand to run.

The pigeon coop was some streets away, on top of an otherwise unremarkable building. Claudia knocked politely at the door. She’d have to use their stairs to get up to the roof.

No response.

She knocked again, and tried to open it. Locked.

Well, hmm. Which would she rather do, get caught climbing up the side of the building, or explain to her father why she hadn’t completed the “very important” task he’d given her?

Side of the building it was.

Claudia was reasonably strong for her age, and had spent a good deal of her childhood being allowed to get up to mischief with Federico and Ezio, if not to the same extent. She looked around. The street was deserted. A stack of crates against the wall made a nice starting point.

She tucked the front of her skirts into her belt - this wasn’t going to be dignified - and climbed.

At the top, she had to sit down and breathe a little, but had gotten away with far fewer scrapes than she’d been expecting. She found the pigeon with her family’s seal tied to a letter around its leg.

“You have no idea of the lengths I go to,” she told it.

The pigeon cooed.

Letter received, she put it back and climbed down to street level, then made her way home.

Which was not, in any way, how she remembered it when she left.

“Claudia? Claudia!”

Annetta peeked out from behind a bookcase, at first frightened, then relieved. She rushed to embrace Claudia, who returned the gesture automatically.

“What... what happened here? My - my father, my brothers, where-?”

“Guards came! Came and took them - oh!”

Claudia put her hands on Annetta’s shoulders. The woman was trembling, clearly still tense. “Annetta. It will be all right. Where did they take them? Did they say anything?”

Annetta took a breath, and seemed to steady. “Your father and brothers were arrested for treason. The guards took them to the Palazzo della Signoria - to prison.”

Claudia’s grip tightened, but she tried not to panic. “And my mother?”

“She is - she is - I hid with her, but when she objected, the guards, they-”

They rounded the corner into a small space, cleared of debris. A frying pan sat on the floor - a makeshift weapon. Maria sat still in a chair, hands in her lap, back straight, eyes vacant. A bruise was beginning to form along her jaw.

“Mother-”

She was alive. Her skin was warm to Claudia’s hands; her heart beat against Claudia’s chest when she hugged her mother. She responded to Claudia’s presence, but her reaction was delayed, subdued, without will behind it.

Claudia felt a sob well in her throat, and clung tightly to her mother until the urge passed. They would fix this. This was wrong.

She straightened. She would not cry. Her family would not be wrenched apart so easily.

“She’s in shock,” Annetta murmured.

Claudia nodded, once. “Is there somewhere safe she could stay? For - for the time being.”

“I... yes, my sister’s. I will take her there.” She rattled off the address. “Claudia, what are you going to do?”

What was she going to do? What she’d always done when things didn’t make sense - talk to her father, and demand answers.

\-----

She had found a reasonably-clean cloak, and that hid her from any watchful eyes until she reached the Palazzo. There, her tentative plan fell apart, as she realized she had no way into the tower itself without being detained. She herself might not be in danger of being thrown in prison - though really, she had little way to know - but she found it unlikely that they would allow a person suspected of treason to see someone who had plenty of reason to want him freed.

So. Climbing it was. Again.

Just folding up her skirts wasn’t going to get her far this time. She found an out-of-the-way corner and, glancing carefully around for passersby, shucked off her petticoats until she was left with nothing but her overdress and her slip. Not ideal, but it would have to do. She used one of her hairpins to fix the result to her belt, so she wouldn’t have to worry about it slipping while she moved.

Luckily, it was night, which meant no one was around to see the beginning of her ascent. She stuck to shadows and insets when she could, and moved quickly when she couldn’t. Halfway up, she found a guard patrolling the roof.

Claudia ducked back down, out of sight. Why was he...? She risked another look. Oh. There was some kind of renovation going on, and scaffolding would make climbing the rest of the tower simple. Convenient, if one didn’t include the guard.

Could she simply evade him? Go around him? She would have to try.

Halfway across the open part of the roof, she heard the guard make a startled noise behind her. _Directly_ behind her.

She spun.

He aimed.

She shoved.

He fell.

She ran.

She paused, crouched low and to the wall, gasping for air. To fall so far onto the stone and dust - no, she had panicked, there had been no - _intent -_ he had been about to shoot her, she couldn’t have - no, no.

But she could not stay huddled there. She had a good guess which cell Giovanni was in, and thankfully was right on the first try.

“Father!”

“Claudia?” He was clearly startled to see her, but no less glad for it.

“Father, what happened? Annetta said you were arrested for treason, and....”

He reached through the bars on the window to cover her hand with his. “It - it isn’t true, but it doesn’t matter now. Your mother is safe? With Annetta?”

“Yes, she,” Claudia said, before her brain caught up with her ears. “Wait - you knew this would happen? If it isn’t true then-”

Giovanni looked away. “Not the way it did, and not this soon. There is - more going on.”

Claudia stopped, eyed her father, and reassessed. Not the way it did. This was far beyond her petty troubles with Ducchio. She hardened her gaze. “What do you need me to do?”

“Listen closely. Return to the house. In my office there is a hidden door. You are possessed of the same talent as your brothers - noticing what others do not?”

She nodded, lips thin.

“Use it. Beyond the door lies a chest. You must take _everything_ in it, no matter how strange it may seem to you. Among other things is a letter with documents. You know the Gonfaloniere Uberto?”

A family friend, and one whose home she knew how to find.

“Good. Take those documents to him, he will-”

Something clattered in the hallway behind him. Two gazes snapped to it. Giovanni’s returned to his daughter. “Do you understand?”

“Father-” She caught her breath, whispered the next words as if in shameful prayer. “Father, I - I think I’ve killed someone. A guard. I didn’t mean-” But she had, and the words died.

His expression softened. “I never wanted any of this for you. Forgive me that it has found you anyway.”

She just shook her head in mute bewilderment, or perhaps denial. Giovanni put a hand under her chin, lifted her line of sight. “Remember this, Claudia. An eagle is not judged by her beak or her talons. A knife is sharp, a rat has claws, but an eagle is more than these brute, cruel forces. What truly makes an eagle strong are her wings.”

Another noise, this one a more obvious footfall. She opened her mouth to - she wasn’t sure what she would have said, but Giovanni interrupted her anyway. “Go, go! Trust your instincts and you will be safe.”

\-----

The chest was there as he had said it would be. The garments in it were not fitted for her, but were better for these purposes than what she had on, and would make everything else easier to carry. She strapped on the broken... wrist... bracer... thing - whatever it did, it clearly wasn’t supposed to rattle - and added her cloak over the whole ensemble, which for some ungodly reason was bright white and crimson and covered in expensive-looking metalwork. She fiddled with the hood, but couldn’t get it to play nicely under the cloak and resigned to leave it down.

What was left was a sword, which she clipped to her belt; a scroll, which she stashed in the lowered hood for lack of a better idea; and the documents, which she tucked safely against her abdomen, in a sort of pocket on the inside of the outfit. It might have been wildly impractical, but at least she could carry things in it.

She had no idea how to use the sword, though she did hope that simply having it would, by implication, ward off trouble on its own. Unfortunately, this logic was lost on the pair of guards entering the courtyard. Claudia ducked back into the house, hoping they hadn’t seen her.

“-thought there were only three Auditore boys,” one of them was saying.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? Whatever, he’s got to be here somewhere.”

Claudia made a face. Apparently they were unwilling to believe her antics of a woman. Too bad she’d already changed, and her new outfit was too bulky to hide under her overdress. She did the next best thing, and waited, heart racing, for the guards to enter the house further. Once they had rounded a corner, she left as quickly and silently as she could.

Her feet took her to Messer Alberti’s house without her input; for that, she was grateful. Once, she had to veer drunkenly to avoid a group of guards, but otherwise she arrived and delivered the sheaf of papers without incident, mumbling something that apparently made sense in response to the kindly man’s questions.

“Do you need a place to stay?” he asked. “You’re more than welcome here.”

Claudia opened her mouth to accept, then stopped short. Something was off here. She didn’t know what; her family and specifically her father had trusted the Gonfaloniere for years. But still, something warned her from the threshold. She hesitated.

_Trust your instincts._

“I - thank you for the offer, Signore, but I must attend to my mother,” she said mechanically.

He smiled. Where she might had called it genial, it slipped into sickliness. The documents - did she dare leave them-

“Don’t worry, Claudia. Everything is going to be all right.” He closed the door before she could think of how to phrase an objection.

She sighed and let tension fall out of her shoulders. No amount of fear or worry could keep the exhaustion at bay any longer. The acquittal would take place tomorrow, and then everything would go back to normal. It would. It had to.

\-----

It did not.

\-----

Claudia did not stop running until she reached the address Annetta had given her. Then, miserable, unable to process anything further, she simply knelt in a shadowed corner and wept, as silently as she could.

She didn’t notice a figure approach her until the older woman was standing in front of her, offering a gentle hand.

“I’m Annetta’s sister,” she said softly. “Come inside.”

\-----

Annetta’s sister’s name was Paola, and she ran a brothel. Claudia couldn’t really find it in herself to care much about that; she made sure her mother was physically comfortable and found food, a water basin, and an unoccupied bed for herself, in that order.

When she woke, it was to Paola sitting at the desk in the room she’d been given, writing something quietly. Claudia stirred, and Paola refocused her attention.

“Are you feeling better?”

Claudia nodded, then shook her head, then nodded. Paola waited for an explanation, but after a second’s thought, Claudia shrugged and let it stand.

So did Paola. “What do you want to do?”

Claudia’s voice was rough with tears and sleep. “I want to kill Uberto Alberti.”

Paola looked at her evenly. “Then there is a great deal you must learn.”

“Why?” Her throat felt like dry earth. “Anyone can kill a man, with a blade and enough determination.”

“I would have you return, after the... conclusion.” A pause. Claudia didn’t offer her opinion on the matter. Paola continued, “If nothing else, for your mother. Maria is a good woman. Do not scorn her as you would yourself.

“...Annetta has told me something of your family. You have an uncle some ways from the city, yes? It would not be out of his way to give you and your mother shelter.”

She paused, this time to consider Claudia, then to rise and resettle next to her. “What do you want?” she asked again.

Claudia tightened her hands into fists, so that the knuckles showed white under the stress. “I want to know what was in those documents. I want to find out who murdered my father and brothers. I want all this to make sense.” She gestured to the strange outfit and the bracer with its defunct mechanism.

“And the Gonfaloniere?”

She took a breath. In. Out. Normalcy was gone. She could choose what to make of it, now.

“Teach me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I marked this as complete because I'm not sure if I'm going to write more of it, or just leave it at this intro kind of thing. I guess if you want to see something, say something.


End file.
